In today’s blog, we will be taking a look at the huge green card backlogs being faced by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Representing the cause of many of its immigrant employees stuck in the green card backlog, e-commerce giant Amazon has strongly advised the US authorities to provide all available green cards by the 30 September deadline.
Immigrants had to face long waiting periods for green cards before 2020, but the Covid-19 pandemic created even more significant delays, Beth Galetti, Senior Vice President of Human Resources at Amazon, wrote on the company’s website.
She noted that more than 65,000 employment-based green cards went unutilized in 2021. In 2022, Congress granted 281,000 employment-based green cards, but more than 100,000 still remained to be resolved as of June 30.
She further added that the company is thankful for all of the efforts that the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has taken to date, including granting over 176,000 green cards by June 30.
But a significant accumulation remains ahead of the September deadline as well. Beth Galetti also stated that if the green cards are not utilized, they are not transferred to next year’s count. Amazon employees impacted by this backlog already live in the US and contribute to the local economies.
She said that granting green cards not only benefits those immigrant employees and their families, but also culturally and economically enhances US companies, neighborhoods, and regions.
Galetti wrote in her post that to support our teams and communities, Amazon continues to reach out personally to USCIS, the agency within the Department of Homeland Security that administers green cards, strongly demanding that the agency issues all green cards by the provided timeframe.
Furthermore, she said that the company is well aware that this backlog has a big effect on the employees’ lives and families, which is why they have also offered to help USCIS adjudicate these cases and effectively eliminate the backlog.
She concluded by saying that Amazon is proud to recruit people from around the world and is passionate about supporting their employees and their families including those who have immigrated to the US and want permanent residency. But, they know that many of those employees are caught up in the green card backlog.
That’s why they are advocating for their employees and their families before the deadline of 30 September, the federal government’s time limit for processing green card applications this year.
With more than 100,000 green card cases yet to be resolved, a few other leading US companies are likely to adopt Amazon’s story in seeking the allocation of all green cards before the deadline.
As Indians comprise more than 80 percent of the individuals waiting for their green card, employment-based green card wastage affects the Indian diaspora in the US, more than any other group.
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